I Bought the Ugliest HO Locomotive Ever Made

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Well, folks, in today's video, we're going to be unboxing and testing out a somewhat rare and very unusual locomotive I found on eBay. Inside this box is a Riverasi Green Puppy from 1955.

[00:00:14]This engine was part of their four-wheel range at the time and features a shell, which is not necessarily prototypical.

[00:00:21]It's apparently in untested condition, so I'm not sure if it's going to operate or not. and I figured we'd give it a chance and have a look at a very unusual piece of Riverasi's history.

[00:00:37]And well, there it is. What do you think? So, the design of this locomotive is heavily inspired by a real locomotive known as an ABL Bedoni. However, Riverasi took a lot of liberty in terms of redesigning it. They completely reproportioned many features on the locomotive and made it a lot curvier to the point where it doesn't closely resemble its real life counterpart. They crescented it the ALR and I assume the R stands for rivers, but I was not able to verify that. Now, apparently out in Italy, these locomotives are affectionately known as a Scafeta, which I'm probably not pronouncing right, but that translates to little shoe. And just looking at the side profile, you kind of see that in the detail. Now, this was sold as part of Riverosi's puppy range, which was all of their four-wheel engines at the time. This one being the green puppy. And if I had to compare this to a certain type of dog, I would probably say it's a pug where it's kind of ugly, but sort of in a lovable kind of way. What I found out years ago is that automakers will try to kind of give vehicles certain expressions, and it's one of those things that once you see, you kind of can't unsee. So, going by that line of logic, it sort of looks like it's cringing or disappointed. You can put your best guess as to what you think this thing just witnessed in the comments. Anyway, moving on to the engine itself. This specific model doesn't appear to be in terrific condition. You can see there's quite a bit of damage on the shell right here.

[00:02:00]Unfortunately, the drivers are long gone, so this is only going to be a two-wheel drive locomotive. All the buffers do appear to be intact. We'll pop off the shell and have a look at the whole drivetrain. We actually have a full-size river motor in here, which is kind of impressive. This is the same sort of motor they would actually put in the big boy locomotives. So, this is way overpowered for an engine of this size.

[00:02:22]And then right here, you can see they've just yolked a couple of bulbs right to the weight right here. This looks like it might be showing some early signs of zinc pests. So, hopefully these bulbs still work. I have seen cases where the zinc pest will prevent power from flowing. So, that could be a problem.

[00:02:38]But, if we're lucky, it will still work in this case. And right there, I think we have a part number KO Italy, which is where this was made. and Riverasi, which is obviously the manufacturer. Now, I'm not sure if this thing runs. The seller said it was untested, which is usually a red flag cuz quite often things that are untested actually are tested and they're just trying to get your hopes up.

[00:02:57]However, in this case, since it's a pretty simple locomotive and it's got a River Aussie motor, I feel like there's a decent chance it will start. Let's take it over to the track and see what it will do here. One thing that you just have to love about the 040's is that they're just so darn easy to set up on the track. Anyway, let's give it some power here. And I do see some current draw. And we've got working lights. But unfortunately, it seems to be locked up.

[00:03:22]And I don't want to give it power for any longer cuz we're going to end up burning out the motor if it can't turn over. So, we'll open it up and we'll see if we can get that to free up a little bit. It might just need some oil. I'll just quickly throw a little bit of oil on the upper bearing right here, which honestly doesn't look too good. And then by opening up this part right here, we should be able to access the gearbox.

[00:03:44]Honestly, things look pretty clean in there, which is a good sign. I'll be able to add some oil to the lower bearing. Let's see if we can turn this over manually. And Oh, yeah. It's a little bit stiff.

[00:04:00]Oh, yeah.

[00:04:04]Definitely a while since this thing has run.

[00:04:08]It's drawing way too many amps. So, going to have to go through this a little more. I think let's see if we can separate this from the chassis to have a closer look at the motor.

[00:04:24]Okay, I know exactly what happened. If I give you a closer look, uh there are no ball bearings in there. This motor is supposed to have bearings in it and there were like two of them on this side, but the rest of them are completely gone. So, unfortunately, at some point, somebody opened up this motor. They probably didn't know that.

[00:04:41]and uh spilled them all. I might have some on hand. So, if we can put some bearings in this thing, she might just run again. So, I found some genuine 1 mm bearings from Riverosi as well as some grease. But before we go throwing that in the motor, I would just like to quickly clean things up a little bit on the inside cuz you can see there's a lot of grease and hair and all sorts of other stuff that doesn't belong in there. So, we'll just tidy things up a little bit and then we'll repack the whole motor.

[00:05:08]Also going to service the commutator because uh this thing looks pretty wicked.

[00:05:22]Now that we've got everything all cleaned up, we'll start to pack the motor with the ball bearings. It's not the easiest thing to do, but something that I find very helpful is getting a nice tacky grease and then you grab something non-magnetic like a toothpick and then you can just kind of guide them in there.

[00:05:43]Now that we've got one side all loaded up, I'm just going to add a piece of heat shrink tubing around the end here until it completely bottoms out.

[00:05:52]And that should just ensure that they don't fall out while you're adding bearings on the other side.

[00:06:07]Okay, I think we've done it. Let's test this thing and see if it actually works.

[00:06:13]All right, moment of truth here. Let's see what we got. Yeah, there we go.

[00:06:20]Think it needs to break in a little bit.

[00:06:22]The RPMs sound slightly low, but not too bad. It's definitely working a lot better than it did without the bearings.

[00:06:28]What a surprise. So, I think at this point we can go ahead and load the motor back up into the locomotive.

[00:06:40]Just before we go throwing the wheels back in this thing, I'll just give them a quick cleaning with this Track Brite.

[00:06:52]I'm not sure if this thing was added intentionally just to shim up the wheels so it would actually make contact with this gear or if this is something that is not supposed to be there. But frankly, I don't really trust the other work that the previous owner did on this locomotive. So, I'm just going to remove it. Even though this does look a little bit more carved out than it should be.

[00:07:09]It's not inconceivable this thing had some transmission issues, though, cuz uh it's got the forbidden glitter. This is what happens when people don't keep on top of their oil changes.

[00:07:21]Riverosi was typically quite good about adding lubricant to their models when they left the factory. So, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe this thing had oil in it and somebody cleaned it out and then didn't put any fresh stuff. Sort of like they did with those bearings.

[00:07:40]Hopefully things will go a little bit better than before. Should also note that this thing is supposed to have a tensioner on top of the motor, and that's long gone, too, which can lead to some performance issues, but uh we're just going to try to run it without that. Let's see what we got here.

[00:07:54]Uh-oh.

[00:07:58]Kind of sounds like a car stuck in a snowbank. I think that transmission issue is uh in fact a problem. So, I guess we'll go ahead and stick that piece of metal back in there.

[00:08:08]I don't exactly love this as a solution, but uh I guess it's not stupid if it can work.

[00:08:16]Okay, two times the charm. Let's see if this thing will actually go into gear this time.

[00:08:22]Oh yeah, there we go.

[00:08:26]The traction's kind of abysmal, but it is moving.

[00:08:33]problem is obviously that this thing is supposed to be four-wheel drive, but also these are not rotating as well as they could. So, we're just going to add a little bit more oil and see if we can just get things moving a little bit better. And then hopefully the friction will do the rest in terms of reing this model.

[00:08:55]At least our current draw isn't too bad.

[00:09:12]Well, still doesn't seem great, but it definitely has improved a little bit.

[00:09:16]Let's see if we can actually get this thing to haul some cargo. Now, of course, this thing doesn't even have a coupler, so we'll have to rig something up here.

[00:09:25]Yeah, that should work fine for now.

[00:09:40]Just as I've been running this thing around, the brushes must have receded cuz now if I give it some power, it actually revs really well. So that's great to see. I wasn't expecting that, but it's a positive result.

[00:10:44]Well folks, that's going to be it for today's video. I hope you all enjoyed.

[00:10:49]If I'm honest, this thing took a little bit more effort than I was expecting to get it running again. But after adding some new bearings and fresh oil, we've got a very unusual looking piece of Riverasi's history running again. So, I'm pretty happy with that. Anyway, I just like to thank you all so much for watching.